NAS and Plex recommendation?
Discussion
Worth looking at the caveats involved in using a NAS for Plex -
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/20137379...
NAS devices are not always ideal for Plex - the CPU in them isn't very powerful, so typically means that you need to ensure that all of your media can be directly streamed without any need for transcoding.
This rules out things like transcoding lower streams to mobile devices and the like, and also means that you will need to burn in subtitles.
I use a Raspberry Pi for my Plex server and have the same limitations - the subtitle one can be a bit of a pain when I forget to do it, as the Pi is useless at transcoding.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/20137379...
NAS devices are not always ideal for Plex - the CPU in them isn't very powerful, so typically means that you need to ensure that all of your media can be directly streamed without any need for transcoding.
This rules out things like transcoding lower streams to mobile devices and the like, and also means that you will need to burn in subtitles.
I use a Raspberry Pi for my Plex server and have the same limitations - the subtitle one can be a bit of a pain when I forget to do it, as the Pi is useless at transcoding.
I used a rpi for a while to serve my media.. but not plex. it doesnt have the horsepower for that.
Just a samba/NFS server that fed a Kodi box elsewhere.
even then, it only really had the bandwidth to stream to 1 device at a time.
this was fine for me as kodi seems to play every file format known to man.
but a transcoding lex server will need some power behind it, especially if your transcoding from 1080 down to mobile device screen sizes or 4k to 720p or even, if you set your connection to a lower bandwidth.
i currently use a Dell T20
http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/poweredge-t20/pd
with 5 disks in ZFS pool.
it has enough horsepower to transcode upto 4 clients at once whilst leaving enough resources for all my other VM's and docker containers
Just a samba/NFS server that fed a Kodi box elsewhere.
even then, it only really had the bandwidth to stream to 1 device at a time.
this was fine for me as kodi seems to play every file format known to man.
but a transcoding lex server will need some power behind it, especially if your transcoding from 1080 down to mobile device screen sizes or 4k to 720p or even, if you set your connection to a lower bandwidth.
i currently use a Dell T20
http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/poweredge-t20/pd
with 5 disks in ZFS pool.
it has enough horsepower to transcode upto 4 clients at once whilst leaving enough resources for all my other VM's and docker containers
98elise said:
I keep looking at this and end up coming back to some usb disks and a rasberry pi as the server.
Which is a bad idea, as IIRC, the Ethernet shares the same bus as the USB and data transfer is a proper bottleneck because of this.And it really doesn't have the CPU horsepower either.
In fact, I have tried the Pi for several IT related tasks, and I currently have two sat in a box somewhere as I have always found them to be pretty useless.
I know people rate them for Kodi etc. etc. but I thought they were to slow even for that.
TonyRPH said:
98elise said:
I keep looking at this and end up coming back to some usb disks and a rasberry pi as the server.
Which is a bad idea, as IIRC, the Ethernet shares the same bus as the USB and data transfer is a proper bottleneck because of this.And it really doesn't have the CPU horsepower either.
In fact, I have tried the Pi for several IT related tasks, and I currently have two sat in a box somewhere as I have always found them to be pretty useless.
I know people rate them for Kodi etc. etc. but I thought they were to slow even for that.
The pi isn't suited to read/write intensive tasks, but with a redis db loaded up and using it as a command and control point for other devices and sensors and arduinos it really comes into its own.
I use unRAID on an old pc and a plex docker. https://lime-technology.com/forum/
I spent ages buggering about with different set ups for Plex....I eventually decided that I would spend a couple of quid on the problem and bought a NUC PC with a 3TB external disk. I've not hit the limit with transcoding yet, I had 6 streams running with no issue the other day and the CPU seemed to be able to handle more than I would ever need. It's also silent and small so really does the trick. I had some components (like and SSD) kicking about spare so it only really cost me the the price of the NUC box.
mathmos said:
I spent ages buggering about with different set ups for Plex....I eventually decided that I would spend a couple of quid on the problem and bought a NUC PC with a 3TB external disk. I've not hit the limit with transcoding yet, I had 6 streams running with no issue the other day and the CPU seemed to be able to handle more than I would ever need. It's also silent and small so really does the trick. I had some components (like and SSD) kicking about spare so it only really cost me the the price of the NUC box.
Is the NUC an i3? I had a dual core & it wouldn't stream the newer HEVC files at all, changed it for an Amazon Fire TV & all is well 
LordHaveMurci said:
mathmos said:
I spent ages buggering about with different set ups for Plex....I eventually decided that I would spend a couple of quid on the problem and bought a NUC PC with a 3TB external disk. I've not hit the limit with transcoding yet, I had 6 streams running with no issue the other day and the CPU seemed to be able to handle more than I would ever need. It's also silent and small so really does the trick. I had some components (like and SSD) kicking about spare so it only really cost me the the price of the NUC box.
Is the NUC an i3? I had a dual core & it wouldn't stream the newer HEVC files at all, changed it for an Amazon Fire TV & all is well This is the one I picked up -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B018Q0GN60/ref...
I have a Seagate Personal Cloud single disc 3TB NAS, it comes with PLEX already loaded but not installed. I installed it as the PLEX app is free on my Samsung TV. Works fairly well. But as others have said, I don't know if the NAS is powerful enough to run as the server really. I get some delays when streaming to the TV sometimes, but I can live with it. And it took a very long time to scan my library of about 2.5TB of content.
I'm not really up on what transcoding is all about, but I think I have all the settings to the 'lightest' variables.
I may try an old XP laptop (possibly load LINUX) to act as the server.
I'm not really up on what transcoding is all about, but I think I have all the settings to the 'lightest' variables.
I may try an old XP laptop (possibly load LINUX) to act as the server.
Another HP Microserver here, I picked it up last Xmas for about £110 including cashback, put some drives in I had lying around and installed Ubuntu Server. Took about half a day to get up and running, then another half day to copy the content onto, but it's been running happily ever since.
Gah these threads always set my teeth on edge. The majority of people should not be transcoding their content, it lowers the video quality and requires significant server horsepower that simply isn't needed by any modern streaming device. The more devices you want to stream at once exponentially increases the horsepower required.
Even the Firestick can stream your average HD film with no transcoding required and they are hardly expensive or difficult to setup, let alone a much more powerful device like a modern smartphone or Nvidia Shield.
By all means use Plex as your media server and client if you like its interface, but do not transcode by default as its usually not needed.
If you are planning on streaming from the NAS while out and about then it can make some sense to reduce the bandwidth required by a high quality rip, but that's about it now. As long as your TV has a HDMI socket there is no excuse to use transcoding within your house now, Android streaming devices are more than capable and cheap enough to mean they should be ubiquitous.
Even the Firestick can stream your average HD film with no transcoding required and they are hardly expensive or difficult to setup, let alone a much more powerful device like a modern smartphone or Nvidia Shield.
By all means use Plex as your media server and client if you like its interface, but do not transcode by default as its usually not needed.
If you are planning on streaming from the NAS while out and about then it can make some sense to reduce the bandwidth required by a high quality rip, but that's about it now. As long as your TV has a HDMI socket there is no excuse to use transcoding within your house now, Android streaming devices are more than capable and cheap enough to mean they should be ubiquitous.
tankplanker said:
Gah these threads always set my teeth on edge. The majority of people should not be transcoding their content, it lowers the video quality and requires significant server horsepower that simply isn't needed by any modern streaming device. The more devices you want to stream at once exponentially increases the horsepower required.
Even the Firestick can stream your average HD film with no transcoding required and they are hardly expensive or difficult to setup, let alone a much more powerful device like a modern smartphone or Nvidia Shield.
By all means use Plex as your media server and client if you like its interface, but do not transcode by default as its usually not needed.
If you are planning on streaming from the NAS while out and about then it can make some sense to reduce the bandwidth required by a high quality rip, but that's about it now. As long as your TV has a HDMI socket there is no excuse to use transcoding within your house now, Android streaming devices are more than capable and cheap enough to mean they should be ubiquitous.
So how do I stream from my DS213j to my IOS & Android devices then? I use my Fire TV to stream to my main TV but also like to stream to mobile devices.Even the Firestick can stream your average HD film with no transcoding required and they are hardly expensive or difficult to setup, let alone a much more powerful device like a modern smartphone or Nvidia Shield.
By all means use Plex as your media server and client if you like its interface, but do not transcode by default as its usually not needed.
If you are planning on streaming from the NAS while out and about then it can make some sense to reduce the bandwidth required by a high quality rip, but that's about it now. As long as your TV has a HDMI socket there is no excuse to use transcoding within your house now, Android streaming devices are more than capable and cheap enough to mean they should be ubiquitous.
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